 |  |
Editor’s note: Scott Weiss is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and the former co-founder and CEO of IronPort Systems, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007.
When I was a kid, I read tons of superhero comic books. I fantasized about superpowers, but the storylines about heroes with massive Achilles’ heels really held my attention the most. They saved the world but had screwed up personal lives, made lots of mistakes, and often acted like complete assholes. In retrospect, I related to their flaws. And, probably not coincidentally, my favorite characters exhibited core weaknesses I had experienced: Spider-Man (immaturity), Iron Man (overconfidence/hubris), and Wolverine (rage). Ironically, when the character’s weakness comingled with the superpower, it would often spur them to succeed against impossible odds.
It was in this context that I was riveted reading Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. Given the number of different interviews and unfettered access granted to Isaacson, it felt like an incredibly authentic account of Jobs’ life. His greatest accomplishments, mistakes, superpowers, and flaws were laid out about as raw as I’ve ever read. Steve’s superpowers were many: He was wickedly brilliant, could see around corners, and had unparalleled understanding of how people interact with technology, to name just a few.
Did Steve have an Achilles’ heel? From the book, one could conclude that he was an extremely demanding boss. Like a beacon, superstars from every function (e.g. engineering, design, marketing, etc.) were drawn to work for Steve. They described his aura as absolutely overwhelming. And Steve pushed these A+ players to extraordinary, impossible achievements. Steve’s drive for speed and perfection often resulted in harsh, public criticism — usually directed at his very best people. Steve would constantly look over their work and declare, “This is shit!” or “This really sucks!” On my Kindle, I searched the words “shit” and “sucks” and counted 24 instances where he used one of those phrases referring to someone’s work/product.
I’ve had a number of entrepreneurs suggest that this persona isn’t unique to Steve Jobs but a common trait among some of the most successful founder/CEOs in the world. Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos have all been reported as similarly caustic at times. Is this something to be emulated?
As I was reading the book, something struck me like a hammer: Despite Steve Jobs’ choice of words, lack of empathy, and sometimes prickly demeanor, he spent a huge amount of time giving his most talented employees constant, hard, critical feedback.
Thinking about how most companies dole out feedback — if they do at all — it’s usually directed at the bottom quartile of performers versus the top. A typical manager at review time spends 80% of their time preparing detailed reviews on the bottom 25%. The top quartile gets lame, short reviews — the equivalent of “You’re doing great, keep up the good work!” So, a manager takes all that time and effort to get someone doing the work of half of a full-time employee (FTE) to do the work of .75 or 1 FTE. In contrast, Steve Jobs — with his feedback energy directed at the top — manages to motivate people already doing the work of 2 or 3 FTEs to do the work of 10, maybe 20 FTEs. Now that’s serious leverage! Could this be a superpower comingling with a weakness?
I’ve found that the A players are comparably lazy with regards to their potential. Without serious motivation, they will never reach it—or even try. Despite his delivery, I believe Steve’s critical energy was directionally correct.
Here are a few other suggestions for motivating top talent:
A constant challenge for leaders is to find effective AND positive ways to motivate. The very best companies have inspirational founders who have found a way to coax the superpowers out of their top employees. When the top quartile contributes at 5x to 10x, it makes a serious difference.
SAN FRANCISCO - iPad stands are nearly as numerous as iPhone cases, but the PadDock 10 is more than just a stand. In addition to making your iPad look like a smaller version of an iMac, it adds speaker and connector features too.
Last week, we got our first glimpse at the (heavily redacted) evidence behind a Silicon Valley scandal dating back to 2005 — Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit and other tech firms, it was revealed, had agreements not to poach one another's employees. Technically, the Department of Justice settled an antitrust lawsuit in 2010, but employees who claim they were injured by the arrangement are still fighting for more, with a proposed class-action lawsuit that's having its day in court this month. Today, we obtained an unredacted court document that reveals just how deep the proverbial rabbit hole goes... and how it personally involved Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and other prominent executives. Here's what we learned.
Intel CEO Paul...
When’s the last time you went shopping at JC Penney versus the Apple Store? The venerable retailer, overshadowed by the cheap-chic of Target, is looking to reshape itself by putting the iPhone maker’s former retail chief in charge. Ron Johnson, a 10-year veteran of Apple’s retail effort, explained the retailer and Cupertino, Calif. tech giant share much in common.
Johnson, who for ten years helped build Apple’s reputation as the iconic retailer, said when the company began opening stores in 2001, Apple had three percent of the market — the same amount JC Penney has now. Indeed, when Apple first scouted locations for its stores, he would park near JC Penney’s mall stores because they always had plenty of unused parking spaces.
The new JC Penney CEO aims to get away from constantly selling price and focusing on experience. Akin to Apple’s breakout Super Bowl commercial pitting the Macintosh against a 1984-like monolithic PC, Johnson told reporters earlier this week his goal is to replicate the Apple Store experience for JC Penney shoppers. “It’s not about buying, it’s about enriching someone’s life,” he said.
Although retail is about consumers buying products, that should not be the sole reason for people coming to JC Penney, Johnson notes. He said $1 billion worth of mail promotions in 2011 resulted in just 4 store visits. Johnsons invoked the name of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to back him up. “Steve would have called this insanity,” Johnson said. “At some point, you as a brand look desperate.”
The new retail chief also wants to bring its advertising budget in line with Apple’s. JC Penney will spend $80 million a month on advertising with 12 promotion per year. When Apple first began advertising the iPod, the company spent just $50 million every three months for the entire world.
The JC Penney retail stores will also be remade in the image of Apple Stores. Taking a page from the company’s use of two zones: one to attract customers and another for families to learn about products, JC Penney stores will begin offering a Town Square surrounded by Main Street. Like Target, which offers designer boutiques within stores, JC Penney’s “Town Square” will frequently offer unspecified products and activities. The Town Square concept will begin showing up in all JCP stores in 2013 with the makeover expected to be complete by 2015.
Similar Posts:
Related Stories
| |
Recent studies from Forrester and Good Technology show that Apple’s iPad is doing very well in the enterprise, with new activations soaring. One company just deployed 1,300 of the Apple tablets across its salesforce, because combined with the right software, it believes there’s no better tool a salesperson can carry.
A recent report at InformationWeek details the story of Level 3 Communications, which recently equipped its entire sales workforce iPads, loaded with apps that provide access to pricing information, presentation creation and display, corporate email, customer records and inventory checks. The iPad proved more than up to the task of supplementing, and mostly replacing laptops.
InformationWeek goes into much more detail about what the iPads meant for Level 3, but the advantages for salespeople on the ground can be boiled down to three main categories:
1. Instant on. The iPad’s ability to instantly wake from sleep and pick up right where a user left off exceed that of even the fastest, SSD-equipped notebooks, and only sips power in tiny amounts in order to provide that functionality. That, combined with its superior portability, makes it the perfect tool for doing “quick checks between meetings, at an airport, or in a taxi,” InformationWeek says. With a laptop, five minutes in a taxi might not seem like enough time to make powering up worth your while; with the iPad, that’s a non-issue.
2. Connectivity. The iPad (at least the 3G models) provides always-on cellular network access, so long as you’re within coverage range. Some laptops can offer that, but the process is still often more complicated than just tapping the wake button and being ready to surf, email or chat. But it’s not just cellular radios that make the iPad great for sales; built-in GPS positioning means salespeople can get locally relevant information, like clients or potential clients in the immediate area, in only a few short steps via task-specific software.
3. On-device demo. A laptop is an ineffective replacement for a catalog, and presenting a slide show on one is awkward. Using an iPad as a presentation tool, on the other hand, is natural. The tablet is easily passed around, can be read like a magazine, and can also output to external displays with less hassle and fewer steps than a laptop. And apps like OnLive Desktop and Iongrid make it even easier for iPads to sub in for notebooks capable of running desktop presentation tools.
Level 3 isn’t the only company to realize the value of iPads in the hands of a salesforce. Sears, of all companies, announced in October it’ll begin rolling out iPads in 450 stores in October, and TUAW noted at the time that Lowes and Pacific Sun were also expanding iOS deployments.
InformationWeek thinks 2012 will be a breakout year in terms of actual iPad deployments, just as 2011 saw a huge uptick in pilot programs; if that indeed comes to pass, we should see Apple easily beat the 40.7 million iPads it sold in 2011.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007 to thunderous applause. The revolutionary phone — a product that has now made Apple the top smartphone manufacturer in the world — then went on sale June 29, 2007 to long lines of eager customers and fanboys.
Several years later, Jobs announced that the iPhone’s software would be called “iOS.” These two names, iPhone and iOS, have not only become a part of Apple’s core, but also staple, household names worldwide. Most people don’t know, however, the story of how Steve Jobs took both names from a enterprise/infrastructure company by the name of Cisco. Took? Well, steamrolled, really.
Although Apple did invent the ‘i’ nomenclature with products like the iMac and iPod, Cisco owned the trademarks for both “iPhone and “IOS” many years before Apple. The Silicon Valley-based company has never been in the same market as Apple; Cisco has always focused on networking and enterprise while Apple has targeted the average consumer. Although Cisco has branched out into the consumer space with some of the most popular home routers and networking utilities around, the two companies are still by no means competing for the same thing.
When Apple decided that it wanted to name its handset the “iPhone,” it didn’t bother to consider that Cisco owned the trademark. Adam Lashinsky explains how Steve Jobs walked all over Charles Giancarlo, a Cisco executive at the time, in his book Inside Apple:
Giancarlo fielded a call directly from Steve Jobs. “Steve called in and said that he wanted it,” Giancarlo recalled. “He didn’t offer us anything for it. It was just like a promise he’d be our best friend. And we said, ‘No, we’re planning on using it.’ ” Shortly after that, Apple’s legal department called to say they thought Cisco had “abandoned the brand,” meaning that in Apple’s legal opinion Cisco hadn’t adequately defended its intellectual property rights by promoting the name. To Apple’s way of thinking this meant the name iPhone was available for Apple’s use. Giancarlo, who subsequently joined the prominent Silicon Valley private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners, said Cisco threatened litigation before the launch. Then, the day after Apple announced its iPhone, Cisco filed suit.
The negotiation displayed some classic Steve Jobs negotiating tactics. Giancarlo said Jobs called him at home at dinnertime on Valentine’s Day, as the two sides were haggling. Jobs talked for a while, Giancarlo related. “And then he said to me, ‘Can you get email at home?’ “ Giancarlo was taken aback. This was 2007, after all, when broadband Internet was ubiquitous in homes in the US, let alone that of a Silicon Valley executive who had worked for years on advanced Internet technology. “And he’s asking me if I’m able to get email at home. You know he’s just trying to press my buttons—in the nicest possible way.” Cisco gave up the fight shortly after that. The two sides reached a vague agreement to cooperate on areas of mutual interest.
Cisco had referred to its core equipment operating system as “IOS” (Internet Operating System) before Apple and Steve Jobs decided that the iPhone’s software would be given the nearly-identical “iOS” label in 2010. The second time around, Apple actually acquired the trademark before going public. Jobs got his way throughout the whole process negotiation process. Classic Apple. Classic Steve.
Similar Posts:
Related Stories
| |
A leaked memo shared online by TmoNews reveals T-Mobile will change its attitude toward its subscribers who use unlocked iPhones on their network. When the iPhone owners call in, T-Mobile staffers are being instructed to handle common procedures. These include information about features and specifications and other basic device questions.... 
Former Microsoft head Bill Gates wrote Apple CEO Steve Jobs a letter shortly before the latter's death, according to a report from UK newspaper The Telegraph. "I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know," says Gates.... With about $100 billion just lying around, Apple’s received a number of suggestions for how it can spend that cash. The latest comes from Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch, who argues that Apple could use that money to invest in a new type of subscription TV service to compete with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and the like. But that suggestion overlooks a few very important facts about Apple, and about the economics of today’s pay TV business.
For a clue into how Apple approaches the video market, you need look no further than how it’s dealt with every other part of the media ecosystem to date: It creates good user experiences across an ecosystem of great products that publishers can sell their content on.
It introduced the iPod and iTunes and allowed the music industry to sell their songs on the platform, and it took a cut. It introduced the iPhone and the App Store and allowed developers to create games, utilities, productivity tools and the like, and it took a cut. It introduced the Apple TV for the Hollywood studios and TV networks to rent and sell their movies and shows to consumers, and it took a cut. It introduced the iPad, iBooks and the Newstand and allowed book and magazine publishers to sell digital versions of their titles to consumers, and it took a cut.
You notice a trend here? Product, platform, revenue share. That model has been extremely profitable for Apple, in part because it’s had to bear little risk to collect whatever revenues and profits come from its partners’ content sales. What Apple does not do is pay upfront to have the luxury of carrying content and then shouldering all the risk while attempting to create a sustainable new business model for its partners.
But let’s talk about the actual economics of subscription pay TV. Time Warner Cable announced in its earnings Thursday that it paid somewhere around $25 a month per subscriber in content costs last quarter. Think Apple could do better? It can’t. Any new entrant to the pay TV market acquiring content licenses does so at rates higher than what others have previously negotiated. This was true when the satellite TV companies entered the business, it was true when Verizon and AT&T began offering IPTV services, and it will be true for anyone that attempts to create a virtual cable company.
Starting costs for Apple — or anyone else for that matter — to build a subscription TV service will be in the mid-$30s at the very least. Which means it’s not going to roll out a $25 or $30 subscription service or undercut your local cable company on price anytime soon.
You know how every quarter analysts dissect however many billions of dollars Microsoft has lost in its Internet services business? That would be Apple TV’s media business, quarter after quarter, if it decided to go down this road. Sure, Apple has a lot of money. And sure, Apple could bear those costs. But why would it? What’s the actual benefit for Apple or its investors?
“But what if I don’t want all of the channels? That’s where Apple could really disrupt things!” It’s a familiar refrain to hope and wish and pray that someone like Apple will be able to do what others have failed at so far, and negotiate a la carte pricing for individual networks. That sure sounds good, and I’m sure consumers would love it! That is, until they saw the price tags associated with each of the networks that they would want to buy.
Even if Apple were able to convince Disney, for instance, to separate ABC, the Disney networks and ESPN’s sports networks from the bundle, it would be just like breaking up any other bundle: the cost to sell each network separately would be egregiously expensive. Prohibitively so.
As a consumer, would you pay $5 just for ABC? Another $5 each for CBS, NBC and Fox? $15 or $20 for ESPN? $25 for HBO? It’s not like these guys are just going to give those channels away at a small premium over what they get from cable. If they’re going to break the subscription bundle, they’re going to want to get paid to do it. In that world, how many channels do you think you could buy before the cost became more than what you already pay for a cable subscription each month?
Put all that aside, though, and the truth of the matter is that streaming video is still a relatively niche market. How many people are out there who actually have an interest in a streaming TV service? In theory, the addressable market is every broadband household that also pays for cable service. But take a look at the number of Apple TVs that are out there (just 4.2 million) or the connect rate on smart TVs today, and you see that very few people are actually taking advantage of broadband-delivered video. That could change with the introduction of the mythical iTV, but it seems pretty tiny today.
Sure, Apple created the modern smartphone market with the iPhone or the tablet market with the iPad. But it’s not into creating new services. And it seems unlikely that Apple would introduce a new service like this, especially one that is likely to be risky, unprofitable and targeting a market segment that doesn’t yet exist.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
Sometimes the revolving door spins quickly at the top. AllThingsD reported today that HP executive Jon Rubinstein is leaving the company for places unknown.
Rubinstein is perhaps best known for his days at Apple, when he spearheaded the rapid growth of the iPod music player -- the piece of Apple hardware widely remembered as the "gateway drug" that has since attracted millions of customers to the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. After Apple, Rubinstein worked at venture firm Elevation Partners, then moved to Palm.
In 2009, Rubinstein replaced Ed Colligan as Palm's CEO, overseeing the ill-fated switch from the old PalmOS to WebOS. The latter mobile operating system first appeared on the Pre, Pixi, and Veer smartphones. Rubinstein became an HP exec when the consumer electronics giant acquired Palm, and was at the driver's seat of the mobile division as the WebOS-powered TouchPad tablet crashed and burned.
When HP decided to get out of the mobile devices hardware market, Rubinstein was given a "product innovation role" at HP's Personal Systems Group designed to lessen the eventual impact of his departure.
Ex-Apple, ex-Palm exec Jon Rubinstein now leaving HP originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Don't walk past police with a stolen iPhone in your boot.
According to the New York Times, a quick-thinking police officer and Apple's Find My iPhone managed to retrieve a woman's stolen iPhone. The woman was in a handbag store in Manhattan when a thief allegedly held her up at gunpoint and took her iPhone.
After searching the immediate area, NYC police officer Robert Garland entered the woman's Apple ID on his own iPhone and used "the iCloud feature" (we're going to assume that means Find My iPhone) to track the phone. Once they had arrived at its apparent location, the suspect walked past with the iPhone beeping in his boot. He was apprehended and the iPhone returned to its rightful owner.
Well done, officer Garland!
NYPD meets FMI: Cop nabs iPhone thief in NYC originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Once you’ve connected to a Wi-Fi network on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, your device remembers its credentials and, for your convenience, connects automatically next time. However, this isn’t always helpful. Sometimes we connect to hotspots accidentally, and it’s frustrating when your device connects to a network you don’t want it to.
You can prevent this by “forgetting” the networks you’ve previously connected to. Once forgotten, your device will no longer connect automatically, and only when you tell it to. Here’s how to forget a Wi-Fi network.
To do this, you’ll need to be within range of the Wi-Fi network you’d like to forget, otherwise it won’t show up on your iPhone. When you’re ready, open up the Settings app and tap on the ‘Wi-Fi’ tab.
You’ll now be presented with a list of Wi-Fi networks in your vicinity. You’re probably already connected to the network you want to forget, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find. Once you’ve got it, tap the blue arrow alongside its name.
Now tap the ‘Forget this Network’ button.
Your device will now forget the credentials for that network, including any security password, and will no longer connect automatically when your device discovers it. But it won’t be blocked forever. If you’d like to reconnect to the network at anytime, simply tap on its name within the Wi-Fi menu, and enter the security code.
Similar Posts:
Related Stories
| |
Germany's Mannheim Regional Court issued a ruling on Samsung's second patent infringement claim against Apple today, rejecting it in a similar manner to the first ruling last week. Judge Andreas Voss offered no reasons for his decision, involving a patent related to the 3G/UMTS wireless telecommunications standard. Samsung still has three other lawsuits in Germany against Apple involving five more patents.
FOSS Patents points out that today's ruling will be a disappointing setback for the Korean electronics firm. The latest case looked like a possible win for Samsung, following its defeat last week, but the decision clearly didn't go in its favor. Samsung has not yet indicated whether it plans to appeal both cases.
While there are still quite a few good comic book reader apps on the App Store, there's really only one choice for buying digital comics directly from the publishers: Comixology's aptly title Comics app. Comixology launched early on iOS devices, beginning with a web interface and then the very popular iPhone app. Since the introduction of the iPad the company's really started to shine, bringing in huge partnerships with publishers like DC, Marvel, and Image Comics. Comixology provides both a very slick and usable reading interface and a very well-designed store that delivers digital comics through in-app purchases.
Comixology's VP of Marketing, PR, and Business Development Chip Mosher kindly met up with us on the floor of Macworld | iWorld this week, and he agrees that the App Store has brought a lot of success for Comixology, both the app and the company itself (which also runs a few other standalone apps). Even so, Mosher says "really good" still isn't good enough. While Comixology does have most of the major comic titles covered, Dark Horse Comics still delivers its titles through its own store, and Archie Comics also come through a dedicated app run by competitor iVerse Media. There are still some whales out there that Comixology is hunting in terms of delivering digital comics on the iPad.
Mosher balked at revealing any major features of the app in the works, but he does say that Comixology is aiming for a "buy once, read anywhere" plan with its digital downloads. Even before iCloud took off, Comixology offered its own syncing service, so any titles purchased on the iPhone would show up automatically on the iPad and vice versa. Mosher says the plan is to do that with everything, so purchases also cross over to Android devices, plus any readers on desktop computers or the web. He agrees that as long as the company can provide readers with their purchased comics when and wherever they need them, customers will be happy to jump in and buy them under the Comixology banner.
Mosher shrugs at the mention of Apple bringing comic books to iBooks in a more official way. Certainly, Apple has shown some interest in bringing periodicals to iBooks, and a few comic authors are publishing their own books using iBooks Author. But Mosher believes Comixology will just have to continue to provide content users want in an app they're happy to use and worry about whatever Apple decides to do when that happens.
Finally, we chatted about Comixology's "GuidedView" technology, which provides a panel-by-panel look at each comic's art. Mosher says that when the tech was first introduced, "I don't think anyone at Comixology thought people would use it," but in fact "a ton of people have." Mosher says it's probably most valuable on the iPhone's smaller screen, but Comixology still uses the tech to provide the feature on all of its new comics, so clearly the company is committing to support it.
Comixology has had a lot of success on the iPad especially, to the point where anyone looking for comics on Apple's tablet will likely end up in this app eventually. We'll keep an eye on the app and the company going forward, and see what they can do next to keep their growing hold on the iPad's comics market.
Comixology reigns over comics on the iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Kidz Gear (http://www.GearForKidz.com) has expanded its line of Wired Headphones for Kids to include a new Apple version designed specifically for the iPod, iPhone and iPad -- the Kidz Gear Apple Wired Headphones for Kids.
This Apple-specific version of the headphones features KidzControl Volume Limiting Technology for a safe listening experience while helping to protect children’s hearing. according to Kidz Gear founder Laurie Peterson. It also sports an inline microphone and a remote with controls for track up, track down, and more.
| |
